In a notable difference from BOI, you get a single resurrection in a run, but the game gets harder after you die, which I really like. The game is fairly forgiving and there’s progression between runs, which means that its unlikely you’ll be unable to win the game eventually. Worth a look if you’re after something less punishing than a full roguelike experience.

B&W is a perfectly fine aesthetic, but its not really adding anything here.

There’s basically nothing to recommend here. The platforming is finicky and boring. The gimmick is that you wrap around the screen, but it’s not a strong enough mechanic to wrap 50 levels/40 minutes around. If the idea intrigues you, get VVVVVV instead, which has better executed screen wrapping puzzles in it as well as a boatload more to offer.

Whelp, that’s that I guess. We’d finally gotten to the part where the show was improving, but, no.

Region locking remains the stupidest thing, especially since I could easily bypass this in a number of ways, either a VPN, routing through my webserver, or installing an addon that mods the HTTP headers. I’m not sure it’s worth the effort though, the ads were too often and the same every time, and a lot of the early 2000’s guests were there to talk about their new TV show which didn’t end up being very good.

Also this. Stupid heat wave. Just add on 4-5 degrees for the actual non-airport temperature.

Of course the 14 day looks much the same, because of course it does. I swear I’m going soft, the heat didn’t bother me nearly as much last year.

It’s also got an interesting visual style. Also I died taking you this screenshot, and it had absolutely nothing to do with being in range of three aces and a flak barrage.

The design here is pretty tight. Getting a decent score is dependent on keeping your multiplier maxed (at 20x), but you heal when you aren’t firing. Therefore a hit-and-run mentality will let you live longer, but you’ll end up with less points than if you live dangerously. There’s a number of weapons, engines, and body types available to unlock and switch between, which should give you something to match your favoured playstyle. I’m not sure it has the depth or skill development required to make it an always installed game on my HD, but I’ve certainly enjoyed my time with it.

The problem is the gameplay is uninspired, repetitive, and uninteresting. You can either rotate the world left or right and move your character left or right, which doesn’t exactly give you much of a problem space. The Escher elements don’t really add much to the equation, especially as it feels like walking on a 2d plane the entire time. Hard to recommend, even at bargain basement steam sale prices.

Infinifactory is a 3D automation line simulator thing from the devious minds who destroyed your brain previously with Spacechem. You get constituent parts of a design and must use various methods of movement and gating to achieve the full design.

I call this design the double down, because screw refactoring when you can make things twice as complex. Annoyingly, conduits connect on all sides and are the only way to transfer state, making creative tubing a requirement on some levels.

There’s a tiny story which is mostly told through audio-logs of dead people who failed at their jobs.

Also through the puzzles I suppose. We’re making food in a totally not-evil way!

I don’t know how I feel about this game. Later puzzles start to fall in the ‘I know what I need to do, it’s just too much freaking work’ category. It doesn’t have the complexity of logistics in modded minecraft, and definitely is missing some of the usability and quality of life features. It also doesn’t have the complexity ramp or progression of something like Factorio, since you get a clean slate every level and occasionally a new object. I’d probably recommend Spacechem over this, and I guess if you liked that you’ll probably like Infinifactory.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3D is the first game that actually required a New 3DS.

I was massively unimpressed by this game, and for a while I was unsure as to why. It had a potentially interesting setting, an open-ish world, a veritable boatload of sidequests, events tied to the day/night cycle, and a non-standard battle system. Then I realized that I was effectively playing a single-player MMO with hotbar combat and ‘get me 10 bear asses’ quests. The fact that it didn’t even compare with 2005-era WOW was just the icing on the cake. The story wasn’t doing it for me, and the characters were grating, so I stopped.

Mini Metro puts you in charge of designing a metro line for a city. You start off drawing lines between three stations, and things escalate until you’re looking at some cthuluesque monstrosity of a metro line wondering how you ended up there. Each week you get additional resources to improve your metro line.

Move the little black shapes to corresponding white shapes. Leave too many people sitting at a station for too long and you lose.

Each of the cities has their own little twist. You can deploy shinkansen (Bullet Trains) in Osaka, while New York gives you lots of interchanges.

Or a city planner who puts all your specialty stations on islands *grableraaaaargh*

There’s a lot to like here, but attempting to go for the leaderboards is an exercise in madness due to the RNG factor. Random station placement is good because it means that levels aren’t a solvable problem, but also means you could end up in a situation like the image above, where you’re forced to spend a tunnel on a corner of some water, or you don’t get a new line when you really need one. Overall, I’d say it’s worth a look.

Crimsonland is a top-down arena shooter. It’s also an indie game from the era of game portals.

It has been updated for steam with snazzy new-ish graphics and UI, which I appreciate and also don’t like.

Doing a decade-to-decade comparison, I’m unsure how well it holds up. The truly impressive number of enemies in the early 2000’s isn’t impressive anymore, and the single looping music track is now noticeably bad. The gameplay holds up and survival mode is still fun, but there’s a lot of filler quests to play before you unlock everything. They have fixed some of the more hilarious bugs and combinations, but the new UI is at best a sidegrade.

In a ‘this decade’ sense, it’s decent, but you can probably find something more entertaining in the genre for the same amount of money, like Nuclear Throne or Teleglitch.